He was smiling gently. “Four million dollars.” Question answered; I was watching his face as carefully as I’ve ever watched anything in my life. He said dreamily: “I’m almost tempted. With a guaranteed passage to South America, that sort of thing?”

“Something like that”

“And who’d put up the money?”

I could see what he was thinking. He’d been too long with no one to talk to, no one except his non-people. He was disappointed that the deal I had in mind wasn’t the one he’d hoped for; or wondering if he’d hoped for too much; or perhaps calculating the risk of that better deal and wondering if it was worth it.

I said, making it sound as though this wasn’t what I was after either: “I’ll get the money somehow. A lot of people would pay handsomely to avert the danger of plague in Africa.”

“The do-gooders?”

“If that’s what you want to call them.”

“A bit dicey, isn’t it? I mean, there I am sitting around a police station while Cabot Cain—that’s a hell of a name! American, aren’t you? Where from?”

I said: “San Francisco. You were sitting around the police station.”

“Och, I was too, and Cabot Cain is passing round the hat asking for benevolent contributions to get this mass murderer on a ship to South America with four million dollars in his pocket.”

I didn’t like that repetition of the four. I thought about it for a while and decided it was merely fortuitous, not thrown at me deliberately. Loveless had many virtues, if that’s what you want to call them; but a chess-player’s mind wasn’t one of them.

He said again: “It’s a bit dicey, isn’t it?”

“I could manage it.” I hoped I sounded unconvincing enough, and was sure that I did.

He shrugged. “It’s an academic question, anyway. I don’t need money that badly.”

“What do you need, Loveless?”

He sighed, and thought for a while, staring moodily at his feet. He didn’t look a bit like the villain of the piece now. He was a sad man with a terrible dream that perhaps he knew could never be realized. A vicious, unholy dream; but none the less I couldn’t bring myself to hate his guts as I should have done. I found myself hoping that his killing would not be at my hands.

He said, and he sounded troubled: “I don’t know, really, and that’s the truth. I only know that when I’m at work, I’m a kind of...a kind of king. There’s nobody does my job better than I do; Cain. Nobody. There’s a thousand mercenaries, five thousand perhaps, fighting all over Africa. Most of them are bums, but not all of them. Some of them fight for money, some for the left against the right or the right against the left, because that’s what they believe in. Some of them fight for one tribe against another just because they just screwed some pretty little virgin in tribe ‘A’. Some of them fight for whoever’s losing, just on principle, and some of them fight for whoever’s winning for the same reason. And some of them fight just for the hell of it, because that’s the only thing they’ve ever learned to do. I guess that’s my reason, really. But to tell the truth, I’m not too sure of it.”

I said, very quietly: “You are not fighting against non-people, Loveless. You are fighting against God.”

He snorted: “Him too, I know, He killed my...” He broke off and took a deep, unhappy breath.

I said: “Your mother.”

He looked at me with a strange expression in his eyes: not angry, not surprised, not hurt. He said: “You know about that? You’ve really done your homework, haven’t you?”

I said: “I know the progression.”

“Progression?” He sounded irritable. “I wish you’d talk more clear.”

“Progression’s the only word. A red tide that killed your mother with mussel poisoning. A disastrous epidemic in Scotland that looked like the same without the red tide, and finally, your own red tide to make it look real when we had more mussel poisoning here. Yes, I’ve done my homework.”

Now, he took the plunge. He said: “Ever been in the bush, Cain? Or are you a city man?”

“I’ve been in the bush.”

“You don’t carry a gun, that means you don’t know how to use one.”

“It means nothing of the sort, I am a crack shot.”

He said carefully: “If I invited you to come in with me...? Maybe I need someone who knows about this stuff. What would you say?”

I had to be careful not to leap at the suggestion, not even to let him think it wasn’t entirely his idea.

I said: “And if I ever got in your way?”

He shrugged. “I’d stamp on you, big as you are, you must know that.” He looked at me broodingly and said: “Well, it was just a thought.”

He was suddenly very alert again, alert and suspicious. He looked at me in utter astonishment, and said: “Och, is that what this is all about? I was trying to figure out how you had the guts to walk right in here, and there it was laid out for me to see, and...” He broke off, angry and puzzled. “But you couldn’t have known I’d make you an offer like that? Were you just...just waiting and hoping I would? You’d better tell me that fast, Cain.”

Play it off the cuff, I’d said. And there it was, written in red ink all over the white starched poplin. Not the best crib in the world, but in the moments thought I gave myself I couldn’t think of a better one; and if there was a more promising way out of that cave alive, I should have found it by now. I sort of smiled slowly, and said:

“In the course of time I’d have made you an offer. When I was sure I could trust you.”

Now, that wariness was suddenly honed to a razor edge. He put the S-phone slowly to his mouth, flicked it on, and said:

“Still all clear, Jerry?”

Histermann must have told him it was; and he must have sounded puzzled about it too. Listening to the answer, too faint for me to hear, Loveless laughed. “No, I didn’t know either until ten seconds ago. And I’m still not sure that I know. But we might just have a major development on our hands.” He stared at me thoughtfully as he listened and then spoke into the receiver again: “No, a very interesting development that I want to think about a bit. Keep your eyes skinned, Jerry, this is the crucial time.”

He put the instrument down and looked at me long and hard, and said: “I’m an evil man, I suppose, if you want to call it that. I’m alone in the world, and I’m an uneducated sort of bastard by your standards. But one thing I am not, Cain, I’m not a fool. Now, tell me why the hell I just shouldn’t blow your head off right now.”

I said: “If you were going to do that, you wouldn’t look for a reason, would you? You said just now that maybe you needed a man like me, isn’t that enough?”

“No. It’s not.”

“You mean that remark was just squeezed out of you? A slip of the tongue?”

“I mean that maybe I got carried away. Aye, you’d be useful, there’s no doubt about that at all. Maybe I’m thinking that you’re even indispensable under the circumstances; you, or someone like you. Someone like you, Cain. All I really need is another man who knows a bit about this botulin stuff.”

“Try and find one who’s willing to go along with you, or not scared stiff of it. Why do you think no one ever used this stuff in warfare? It’s just too damn dangerous, that’s why. And you haven’t got the brains to use it properly.”

“All right, and it’s still not enough.”

There were plenty more arguments, and it didn’t take long to think of the one that would appeal to him most.

I said: “Then there’s more. Plenty more.”

“Talk.”

“All right, I will. You know that the Egyptians are busy wiping out the Sudanese as fast as they can?”

He shrugged. “Common knowledge. Go on.”